


Do Our Talking With a Laser Beam

by hopeless_eccentric



Series: (Free! That's right! Free!) Penumbra Commissions [15]
Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon Non-Binary Character, Communication, Coping, Cuddling & Snuggling, Domestic Fluff, Episode: s03e17-18 Juno Steel and the Heart of it All, Fluff, Growth, Juno is pretty, Kind of a character study, Nonbinary Juno Steel, Nureyev is smitten, Other, a bit post-ep, being proud of your partner's growth, kabert let them be happy challenge, why isnt healthy coping mechanisms a tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-15
Updated: 2020-10-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:27:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27019543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hopeless_eccentric/pseuds/hopeless_eccentric
Summary: As well as they worked together, Juno was always diverting Nureyev's attention in one way or another. He was hardly any less distracting with a glow of cyan and pink blazing across either cheek and fire in his eye as he took steady aim with his blaster.(Free!) commission for the small committee of individuals who petitioned for this
Relationships: Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel
Series: (Free! That's right! Free!) Penumbra Commissions [15]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1921492
Comments: 33
Kudos: 118





	Do Our Talking With a Laser Beam

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Zannolin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zannolin/gifts).



> Hey all!! Pretty light overall but still watch out for spoilers if you havent heard the episode!!
> 
> Content warnings for guns and general implication of/reference to Juno having been in a much worse place in the past

Peter Nureyev had always considered himself quite adept at filing things away, be they pesky emotions or even peskier distractions holding him back from performing a heist to perfection. However, for as many years as he spent brushing distractions aside like bothersome insects and grounding himself when his focus was required, it seemed Juno Steel was a distraction he could never merely file away. 

As well as they worked together, Juno was always diverting his attention in one way or another. He was hardly any less distracting with a glow of cyan and pink blazing across either cheek and fire in his eye as he took steady aim with his blaster. 

Nureyev would have gladly lost himself in the gritting of Juno’s jaw or his vice-like grip on the handle of his gun. He could drown in every noble scar and flash of colored light off his iris, each like a beam of sunlight anointing a bloom on an early, dew-stricken morning. 

Peter hadn’t realized he had ceased breathing, but in that moment, staring upon a goddess with a gun in his hand and regal confidence etched into his face, Peter was sure he existed in some plane of reality in which such trivialities as air were not needed. 

He could have watched that moment for hours, even if the jolt of blaster fire brought it to an end in a second.

Nureyev couldn’t help but think of an evening weeks ago. Poetry night had run a little too late for Peter to drag himself back to his quarters, while Juno had been a little too cold and a little too clingy to let his favorite space heater go. They had arranged and rearranged and bullied one another for their cuddling preferences until it came out that Juno both preferred to be the little spoon and was absolutely humiliated by that fact. 

Peter would have been perfectly comfortable with their legs tangled together and his arms wrapped around Juno as if they could shield him from a world’s worth of harm. However, his comfort relied on another unforeseen factor that kept sleep an arm’s reach away all through what felt to be the first several hours of night. 

Juno kept squirming. 

“My dear detective,” Nureyev heard himself yawn, words muddled somewhere between a pillow and the top of Juno’s head, where he had been pressing kisses when he was more awake.

“Mhm,” Juno murmured. 

“Are you comfortable? If you’re not, I’d be happy to rearrange,” he continued. 

“Just having trouble sleeping,” Juno grumbled, though his words melted away into a pleasant sigh when Nureyev squeezed him close. 

“Whatever could be the matter, dear?” 

“It’s stupid,” Juno shook his head. 

“If it’s bothering you,” Nureyev began, breaking off to press a kiss to Juno’s cheek or jaw or whatever lopsided, shadow-hidden patch of skin his lips had landed upon. “Then it couldn’t ever be stupid to me.”

Juno sighed, pulling Nureyev’s chest out of its knot when he heard a laugh wheeze out at the end of the noise. 

“You’re gonna make fun of me,” Juno snorted. 

“When would I ever do a thing like that?” Peter pretended to sound offended. 

Juno rolled over, a lopsided, sleep-addled grin on his face that Nureyev could hardly stand not to be kissing off. 

“Constantly,” Juno huffed. “If you really wanna know, I’m excited for the shooting drills tomorrow. Tear me a new one, I don’t care.”

Nureyev’s brow furrowed. 

“Beg pardon?”

“You know, in the place with the robots and stuff,” Juno tried to elaborate without his usual vague gesticulations, for his arms were long since entangled around his partner. “I’ve been really working on my aim, and it’s not what it was, but hell, I think I’m getting better.”

Nureyev felt something warm bloom in his chest. The feeling must have spread to his face the way dawn creeps over a hill, for he did not realize he was smiling until Juno echoed the look even more brightly across his own face. 

“You’re making fun of me,” Juno accused, even if the words lost their thorns behind a grin it seemed he could not break free of. 

“I would never do such a horrid thing,” Nureyev huffed, leaning forward to press a kiss to Juno’s forehead, just between his eyes. “I’m proud of you, darling.”

Had Peter been more awake, he would have found it in him to elaborate, perhaps waxing poetic about that pride until Juno got flustered or kissed him quiet or they found some excuse to laugh about the whole thing, more in abject joy than in mocking. However, his words blurred with one of those yawns Juno refused to call anything other than ‘adorable’ and any sort of poetry evaded him. 

He wished he might have professed his pride that Juno was planning for a future, with direct goals and plans that stretched on without any kind of finite end. Juno’s shooting was going to improve, and he planned on being alive to see that happen. 

Once, a million miles and seemingly, a million years ago, Juno had promised him that kind of future in a cheap bed not unlike this one. He had woven a halfhearted lie from the thick city air and Nureyev had been too hopeful and tired and addled to do anything but believe it. 

Peter didn’t have to bury himself under a filed-away layer of denial to make himself believe that the Juno Steel he held in his arms was one who wanted to live. He planned for a future he knew himself to deserve. He smiled at the prospect of getting better at things and took pleasure in the process of work, as much as he would complain as it happened. Juno was the one to ask Nureyev to stay the night, if only to spend a few more hours with him until morning meetings would see them tumbling out of one another’s arms. 

The memory of that night flashed before Nureyev’s mind in an instant as he was yanked by the neck back into the Curemother Prime’s vault. Another pair of flashes whizzed by, sinking their teeth into the ice-slick floor before Nureyev could register that Juno’s finger had so much as twitched. 

Peter recognized the beam across Juno’s face in an instant, as it was twin to the one he had worn that night all those weeks ago. If not for the Cure Mother, Vespa’s sake, and the flame-thrower wielding robot out for their blood, Nureyev would have kissed it off his face right then and there. 

As much as Nureyev insisted on filing away all distractions, he felt the need to ruminate on this one, at least for as long as the mission would allow. Juno made some comment about making a series of near-impossible shots with the giddiness in his voice hardly restrained. That alone threatened to break Nureyev’s mental filing cabinet altogether. 

When a return to the ship and some basic debriefing over the mission had dissolved into an exhausted, yet not unpleasant evening of celebration, Nureyev dragged Juno back to his quarters for the sake of a moment alone. 

Peter knew well there were things to be discussed, but for the time being, all he could bring himself to do was seize Juno around the waist and drag him into a spinning, half-aerial hug. His arms and back protested at the movement, but for the time being, he could put off thoughts of pain. A grin, raw and unpracticed and unchecked before a mirror, had slashed across his face like a shooting star across the night sky. All he cared about was Juno’s own face echoing the sentiment. 

“Those shots were incredible, my love,” Nureyev beamed, breathless. He assumed that was the fault of the dynamite lady in his arms. 

“Nothing I haven’t been working on,” Juno tried and failed to shrug off. 

“Exactly,” Peter pressed. “I know you’ve put time and energy into working on such a thing and I’m proud that it’s paid off for you.”

“They’re not like that every time,” Juno protested. 

“I don’t care,” Nureyev smiled. “It’s a good look on you.”

Juno snorted. 

“What, the gun?” He laughed. “If you’ve been holding out on me or something, we can have that conversation, but—”

Nureyev shook his head. 

“Pardon me a moment in which to be sentimental, but—” Peter broke off for a deep breath. “It’s good to see you planning for the future, darling.”

Juno opened his mouth, brow knit as he searched fruitlessly for a reply. 

“The blaster is a good look on you as well, dear,” Nureyev supplied. 

“You’re an idiot,” Juno chuckled. 

On any other day, Nureyev would have come up with a witty, if not openly flirtatious response. However, it seemed his tongue was as distracted as the rest of him in the face of a goddess walking among mere mortal men. Grasping for words to say in response to someone who wore divinity in every scar and line on his face felt like attempting to stand on a rooftop, dig one’s fingers into the dark, murky sea of the sky, and pluck the stars like fruit from a tree.

Having been single-handedly undone, Peter merely kissed him instead.

**Author's Note:**

> Woohoo!! Let's pretend that nothing bad is going to happen ever :D
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading!! Make sure to SMASH that kudos button and leave a comment down below!
> 
> Check me out on tumblr @hopeless-eccentric or on twitter @withane22 !! I'm taking (free!!) penumbra commissions, so make sure to send some my way there if you're interested!!


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